New Adult Nonfiction Books

"The Civil War was about states' rights, not slavery!" "If you don't like it here, you should go back to Africa." "What about Black-on-Black crime?" "You're just playing the race card." There's a whole arsenal of popular "gotchas" that crop up again and again in discussions about race in America. According to the people who use them, Critical Race Theory is a dangerous threat that promotes racial hatred, and affirmative action is reverse discrimination. At the same time, they insist that racism

"Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard in 2011, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For argues for the importance of self-cultivation in pursuit of justice as a critical feature of Black politics, what Eddie S. Glaude Jr. calls Black democratic perfectionism. Building on the political scientist Adolph Reed's work on 'Black custodial politics' Glaude critiques our impulse to outsource political needs to a professional class of politicians that purportedly represent us. Instead, h

"In this evocative, insightful memoir, a leading voice in Middle Eastern Studies revisits his childhood in war-torn Lebanon and his family's fascinating history, coming to terms with trauma and sexuality. Water on Fire tells a story of immigration that starts in a Beirut devastated by the Lebanese Civil War (1975-90), continues with experiences of displacement in Europe and Africa, moves to northeastern American towns battered by lake-effect snow and economic woes, and ends in New York City on 9

"When Deesha Dyer applied for a White House internship, she was 31, a community college student and aspiring hip-hop journalist, working in an administrative role at a real estate company. When President Barack Obama was elected, she felt so inspired thatshe took a chance on herself despite having no political background or connections. Suddenly, she found herself in the White House at the epicenter of U.S. government. Her fellow interns were in their early 20s, went to Ivy League schools, and h

"America has broken its contract with its laboring class. So, how do we get back to the American Dream? How do we once again become the land of opportunity, the promised land where hard work and commitment to family are enough to protect you from poverty?It's not that hard actually. All it would take, as this book illustrates, is for those in power to once again respect the dignity of work-and the American worker"--

"From leaders on the frontlines of the battle for academic freedom, a first-of-its-kind response to the far right's insidious attacks on the right to learn"--